Eva Adams interview recording, 1993 August 07

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Sonya Ramsey	—the neighborhood where you grew up as a child?	0:01
Eva Gibbs Adams	Well, I grew up in the same neighborhood in which I'm living now. This is my birth home. When my mother was married in 1897, she was married on Eubank Street, which is near here, and my father had built this house and brought her here for the reception.	0:05
Sonya Ramsey	Oh, that's nice.	0:31
Eva Gibbs Adams	Before you go I'm going to show you an invitation to that wedding and reception, and I'm going to show you my mother's wedding dress.	0:33
Sonya Ramsey	Oh. Oh.	0:42
Eva Gibbs Adams	My mother had nine children, only five lived. I am the ninth child. I grew up in this neighborhood during, my childhood life it was a pleasure to live here. You could go off, leave the doors open. Neighbors were neighbors. They would come to your house, you'd go to their house. And at nights, of course, naturally there were no lights up here. So a group of the people, my family being somewhat musical, the people would gather on my porch and we would have family sings.	0:44
Sonya Ramsey	Oh, what kind of songs did you—	1:24
Eva Gibbs Adams	And the kids would participate sometimes, and sometimes they were playing hide and seek and whatnot. But it was a pleasure to live here. But now the only reason that I live here is because it's dear to me. It's my birthplace.	1:24
Eva Gibbs Adams	Now, as years went on, different people moved into the neighborhood while the older ones died out. It was all together different. It's all together different now. Now to tell the truth on this street, I have only two houses which I feel comfortable visiting. That's the lady who's just been carried to Greenville with a stroke, and Elena Adams who lives over there.	1:43
Eva Gibbs Adams	Now the others are friendly. Gangs park over on the right side of me. They used to drinking. Back on my fence there used to be men who stayed out there all night, winter or whatever. They would build fires, which frightened me away. Had cans that they would put the fire in, but they all would tell me, "Ms. Adams, we're going to look out for you."	2:15
Eva Gibbs Adams	That's the one thing, they all respected me, but you don't ever know when that one drug addict is going to tell him, you can do what you want to do. Ms. Adams lives by herself. She was a teacher and we can prey on her. But so for that reason, I started staying out nights. But now since the police have been patrolling this area quite frequently, I don't have the men standing around all night like that. But so far as my childhood days, they were good.	2:45
Sonya Ramsey	I wanted to ask, was your neighborhood when you were growing up, was this neighborhood segregated?	3:28
Eva Gibbs Adams	Hmm?	3:33
Sonya Ramsey	Was this neighborhood segregated when you were growing up?	3:34
Eva Gibbs Adams	Oh, yes. It's always been segregated. Of course, these recent years there's a lot of White girls live up here with Black boys. But it's always been segregated. And there's been segregation downtown at a certain point. And of course, naturally the restaurants, we could not go in the front door even the back door.	3:36
Eva Gibbs Adams	A case that I know of, the mother is very fair. You could say she's White, but she isn't White. The son is a brown skin, maybe your complexion. The mother went to get some barbecue once, she walked in the front door. There was some other customers in there, White, and naturally she had to wait a while to be waited on. And of course, the son was out in the car. So he came in the front door and the first senior clerk says, "We don't serve the Blacks in here. You have to go around to the side."	4:03
Eva Gibbs Adams	So he says, "That's my mother." And of course, the White girl almost dropped down because she thought her mother was White. But I'm telling you just how it was. Even though she was Black, they not knowing she was Black, but knowing that the boy was Black, she's going to send him out. So see, that's some segregation there.	4:47
Eva Gibbs Adams	And during our [indistinct 00:05:17] downtown and sections like that, when they had the restaurant had first started having food served in five and ten store, the Blacks were not allowed to go to the counters. So when Easter season, the Blacks got together and they decided they were to boycott the stores.	5:11
Sonya Ramsey	What time period was this?	5:42
Eva Gibbs Adams	Hmm?	5:43
Sonya Ramsey	What time period was this? I'm sorry. Okay. What time period was this?	5:45
Eva Gibbs Adams	That was in—when did Martin Luther King get in there?	5:52
Sonya Ramsey	'60's then? In the '60's?	5:53
Eva Gibbs Adams	In the '60's. That was in the '60's. And of course they demonstrated. They got put in jail. They came out, but the stores lost so much because of the fact they did it purposely. Because if your money's good on one side of the store, then it should be good on the other.	6:00
Eva Gibbs Adams	Now downtown, I went to a drug store on the corners of Broad and Middle Street. It's not there anymore, but I bought some medicine on one side of the drug store, and I felt like I wanted some ice cream from the other side. So I went over and asked for the ice cream. And in fact, I didn't get a chance to ask, because a girl just waited on everybody else who came in before, after I did.	6:17
Eva Gibbs Adams	So I took the things that I had purchased from the other side of the drugstore back, and the man said, "What's wrong with them?" I said, "Nothing's wrong with them." I said, "Something's wrong with this store." I said, "Now if my money's good over on this side of the store and it's not good on that side, I don't want it."	6:50
Eva Gibbs Adams	So naturally he wanted the money, which I had paid him. So he went across and said something to the girl. So she immediately fixed this ice cream cone. Well, I had my medicine. So when I finished talking with the man, I came around near the front, and as I was going out of the door, the girl says, "Here's your ice cream." I said, "Well, eat it."	7:13
Eva Gibbs Adams	And of course, we have to break down the segregation in manners like that. And in boycott when they had supplied the stores with things for Easter and Christmas and like that.	7:40
Sonya Ramsey	How old were you?	7:55
Eva Gibbs Adams	Hmm?	7:55
Sonya Ramsey	How old were you when you did that with the ice cream?	7:56
Eva Gibbs Adams	How old?	7:57
Sonya Ramsey	Mm-hmm.	7:57
Eva Gibbs Adams	Well, I'm 80 now.	8:00
Sonya Ramsey	Oh, okay.	8:02
Eva Gibbs Adams	I'm a good old ripe 80 years old, but I don't feel 80. Oh, let's see. That's about 30 years. About 50. 45 or 50 or something of that nature.	8:03
Sonya Ramsey	I wanted to go back and ask you about your parents. Did they ever tell you anything about segregation or about how to act in front of Whites when you were little?	8:19
Eva Gibbs Adams	Well, not as such. I don't know whether they were entangled with that phase of life. It just so happens that my family, as far as I know, had no—well, I'm sure my great great-grands had difficulty, but I can't recall anything that they have said that was too bad. In fact, I don't remember them saying anything about—	8:29
Sonya Ramsey	How did the children learn how to act around Whites and how to act in segregated places?	9:01
Eva Gibbs Adams	How did they act?	9:09
Sonya Ramsey	Yeah. How did they learn how to act that way?	9:10
Eva Gibbs Adams	In segregated places?	9:12
Sonya Ramsey	Mm-hmm.	9:13
Eva Gibbs Adams	You mean like say for instance, if they go out?	9:13
Sonya Ramsey	Yeah.	9:13
Eva Gibbs Adams	If they go—they acted all right. The ones that I know of, they weren't loud or rude or—	9:23
Sonya Ramsey	Oh, no. I mean how did they learn to go, not to go to the White water fountain and things like that?	9:31
Eva Gibbs Adams	Well, I guess parents told them. Said, "Now this water's for Whites and this is for Blacks." Well, naturally, some of them were going to try that White water, which was the same as the Black fountain. So that's the way they learned to do. They learned that the Whites didn't respect them. They'd go in a store, Post Office or something, if a White's in front of you and let the door slam if you right there.	9:34
Eva Gibbs Adams	And those things just grew up to a certain point when the Blacks got together and decided that we'd taken enough. And of course, we're still not getting everything that we need. But in New Bern, since integration, I don't think we had a problem, not too big a problem, not even the turnover of the schools, even though we had a few, who were, in fact, one incident where they burned a cross in front of one of the Black girl's homes. But that was about the biggest thing.	10:10
Eva Gibbs Adams	And of course, we only had one big high school here for New Bern City, and they pulled a Black principal from a Black high school and placed them in the White high school, because seemingly that White principal was not able to maintain the order with Blacks going over, not all White is in this school term. Then, the next term the Blacks are coming in.	10:48
Eva Gibbs Adams	Well, naturally, some the kids, some of these kids, the White kids were going to have their fun with the Blacks. When I say fun, I mean teasing them, calling them niggers and whatnot and like that. So they found out that the Black children were not going to take it. And of course, they retaliated, but not to an extent that it drew public attention, not too much attention. But they have done pretty good here.	11:18
Eva Gibbs Adams	You go downtown now and sometimes back if you coming up the steps at the Post Office, this is a person, lady or a man who's at the door and think you're going to be there before they go in. They'll hold the door for you. They'll push the door for you. But—	11:55
Sonya Ramsey	I wanted to go back and ask you, I guess, questions before integration and everything. So I guess I wanted to ask you, when you were growing up, what were some of the games that you and your friends played for fun?	12:14
Eva Gibbs Adams	For fun?	12:27
Sonya Ramsey	Mm-hmm.	12:28
Eva Gibbs Adams	Oh, we on the street. We'd draw hop scotch and we jumped rope and we played hide and seek and played ring games. And what else did we do? We just played cook—kids were interested in cooking, playing house and everything. I remember the back of this yellow house way back, there were two big cherry trees there. And I remember the lady's girl that lived over there, and some of the others would go to the back of the field and have our little kitchen.	12:29
Eva Gibbs Adams	And of course, the Black people mainly work for the mills, and people had to take the dinners to them. So when we got our little cooking done, we'd come out here on this street, supposed to be taking our meal. So that's another one of the games we played. And let's see, what else did we do? I don't know.	13:07
Eva Gibbs Adams	But that was an incident that Whites didn't want Blacks to have anything equal to their or having, they're sharing. So anyway, we knew they didn't want us to succeed. So it was said that someone took the food to a man at the mill, and of course the man was eating and the White man came up and said, "Ooh, you have a good appetite."	13:32
Eva Gibbs Adams	And no. The man said, "Well, see, I got a good appetite. The reason I have so much food." And the White man said, "I sure wish I had that appetite." So the Black man said, "You want everything we have, now you want my appetite." I mean little things like that. But frankly speaking, I have had had no, what I would call trouble with the Whites as such.	14:14
Eva Gibbs Adams	Now when we—I guess I'm going back and forward, but when the schools were being, going to be integrated, they had workshops with the Black teachers and the White. In fact, it was really just a discussion period. They had it several days. We poured out what we felt was right. They poured out what they felt was right.	14:44
Eva Gibbs Adams	Well, sometimes we'd almost get in arguments because some statements were made that had the slaves, the slave owners not been intimate with the Blacks, we all would have been Black. But the White man interfered, we were good enough for that, but not good enough for anything else.	15:16
Eva Gibbs Adams	We told the teachers sat down there and I said, I told—I didn't tell them that another teacher did. But I told them, I said, "Now, up where I live, nights, particular, I'd see White men riding through the Black area looking to pick up some Black girls." I said, "If they're good enough to pick up at night, why they're not good enough to pick up in the daytime?"	15:43
Eva Gibbs Adams	I said, "That's why we are multi-colored because of your race." And of course, we did fine. I went on into the integrated school, and of course we held our own. I knew as much as the next one did over there in my field. So I let nobody push me over. I let nobody push me over.	16:12
Eva Gibbs Adams	And it was to the point that those White teachers who were very friendly—in fact, I'm just a person that people become friends with and I taught, and what we had at that time pods, P-O-D-S and I think it was at a P-A-R-D-S one. But anyway, I taught with three other teachers and there was one teacher that I knew was racist because one of the other White teachers told me, she said, "But don't let her know I told you." She taught language arts and so did I. And she just thought she was way up. She wanted to be first in everything. If we went to the assembly in our party, she had to be the first one out, even though she was nearest to the door, the exit.	16:39
Eva Gibbs Adams	So I was having a program one day, and I told her and told the others that I wanted my children to go first so I could seat them so that I could watch them. That particular day, she got her children up and took them out first. So I immediately told her, "You", when I got in the auditorium before everybody was seated, I said, "I asked you to let my class go first because I was having the program." I said, "No." And I said it right in front of the children. I said, "You had to hop up and be the first one in there." She cried.	17:32
Eva Gibbs Adams	So anyway, for lunch was the same thing, in our pods, she wanted to be first because she's next to the door. So I put an end to that in this way. I said—now I met with the three others. I said, "This is the way we are going to work this thing in this pod by going to lunch." I said, "If you go first, one at the door, you go first this week, I'm going first next week. And the man across the hall is going first the next, and the other one, the first, it'll come back to you and there'll be no trouble."	18:21
Eva Gibbs Adams	So honey, everybody, the people agreed to it. And that's the way we worked it and it worked out beautifully. Worked out beautifully. So I had no trouble during the integrating of faculty members, not at all. The principal, if anybody would get in, a young teacher would get in and she was having difficulty, even with the discipline or her subject matter, he referred the people to me. And of course, I thought that was something. And of course, that's the way it's been.	18:59
Sonya Ramsey	Okay. I just wanted to ask you—I'm sorry, I keep going back. I wanted to ask you, what kind of occupations did the people have in your, the adults have in your neighborhood when you were growing up?	19:38
Eva Gibbs Adams	Well, now my daddy and several, most of them was the mills, lumber mills.	19:45
Sonya Ramsey	Is it lumber mills?	19:51
Eva Gibbs Adams	Yes. And my daddy was contracting tanner, roofer. My mother didn't work out in service until my daddy had a stroke. Then, she went to work out in the service.	19:52
Sonya Ramsey	Okay. I wanted ask—	20:14
Eva Gibbs Adams	And let see what else. They called my daddy a tinsmith too, because after he had his stroke, he couldn't go up on the tops. So he did things like mending, utility, or I meant to say utensils and stoves and little lighthouses. And of course, now before my day, they had a horse and I think he was paying about $5 a month on that. And then, I do remember when they had a cow, but we never had a farm. We've had a garden.	20:17
Eva Gibbs Adams	And of course, my mother didn't work out until he had the stroke. She was a house lady. And of course, that's it. What else you want to know?	21:08
Sonya Ramsey	I wanted to ask, do you have any remembrances of your grandparents?	21:24
Eva Gibbs Adams	Do I have any what?	21:26
Sonya Ramsey	Remembrances of your grandparents?	21:27
Eva Gibbs Adams	I remember my grandmother on my daddy's side and on my mother's side.	21:28
Sonya Ramsey	Okay.	21:35
Eva Gibbs Adams	Now I don't remember too much about my daddy's mother, but I never knew her to work out. She owned a lot that's next to me. She owned that. And my mother's mother, I didn't know her father because he had passed. Okay. But I think she said she lived in the rural district growing up outside of New Bern. And of course, naturally I'm sure they had a farm. But coming into town, I don't know. I had an uncle, my daddy's brother, who was an artist, but he died before I was born.	21:35
Sonya Ramsey	You said you remembered your grandmother. What was she like?	22:32
Eva Gibbs Adams	My grandmother?	22:35
Sonya Ramsey	Mm-hmm.	22:36
Eva Gibbs Adams	Well, I told you I never knew her to work out. She was real tall, real lovable, everybody up—this is a [indistinct 00:22:51] section they call it. And of course, she just stayed in the house and worked. Now my granddaddy, not my granddaddy, great-granddaddy, last name was Bartlett. They own from that lot all this block all around.	22:39
Sonya Ramsey	Wow.	23:14
Eva Gibbs Adams	And not until I guess the '40's, the street in the back of me, which now is G Street, was Bartlett Street, my great-great-granddaddy's name.	23:17
Sonya Ramsey	Do you know how he came to own that land?	23:37
Eva Gibbs Adams	No. I really don't. I can't tell you, but I guess it was in the '50's when they just changed the name.	23:39
Sonya Ramsey	Did they keep his land or is it still owned by them?	23:48
Eva Gibbs Adams	Now, that land over there now, which he owned. That is mine. The grandchildren signed it over to me. My granddad and grandmother on my daddy's side gave us, my daddy, this piece of land on which this house is built. He sold just enough space between his lot and the one he gave my daddy to go up in this alley for a cart and horse, horse and cart.	23:52
Eva Gibbs Adams	That was the width of the alley he sold. And then, some White person bought the land back of this house, but not over there. But recent, well, not recently, the city has taken some of the width from the lot over there and made a bigger alley, because they had four houses down there, which are not there now. So that made the lot over there not as wide, but it is as deep.	24:27
Eva Gibbs Adams	And of course, excuse me, I don't know why they change the names of the street so much. I grew up with this street all the way up to the railroad as Myrtle Avenue.	24:57
Sonya Ramsey	Oh, okay.	25:11
Eva Gibbs Adams	They changed it once to Craven Avenue, because we got a Craven Street downtown. Now the block in which I live from K Street to this corner is H Street. And across the corner, which is just as straight as this, is Myrtle Avenue. But we played, and now some of the people that lived around here then would go, trucks would come by for our hands to go out and pick cotton and they'd go out and pick beans and I guess they did tobacco too, but that's the way a lot of the people around here did. Particularly the female group. They take their children and spend the day, take their lunches and whatnot and go in the cotton field or whatever the type of farm products they were raising.	25:12
Eva Gibbs Adams	And that's what a lot of them did. Many of them worked out in service. White people used to have servants all the time, but now they've gotten to the point where they eat out and the Blacks don't get as much. So the people then that's just about what they did. They worked in fields and things of that type and went to church.	26:14
Eva Gibbs Adams	We got too many churches in New Bern for the people who attend. We got enough church—in fact, there's enough who don't go to church that will fill up all of the churches, but they rather just hang around.	26:44
Eva Gibbs Adams	I can see this point, the young men back in my early days were anxious to work. The type worker that I've described to you, the mill, the fields, cotton, tobacco, and corn, and whatnot. They were ancestor work. They got very little for their work, but they were ancestor work. But now I don't believe these guys want to work.	27:01
Eva Gibbs Adams	They stand around as if they don't have a place to stay. If you can get a quarter and I can get a quarter and he can get a quarter, we get 75 cent bottle of wine and you sip off once, just pass it around. The most sharing people I've ever seen, they said, "[indistinct 00:27:53] don't die." But anyway that's just about what I know.	27:36
Sonya Ramsey	Okay. I wanted to ask you, what type of values did your parents try to instill in you?	28:05
Eva Gibbs Adams	Hmm?	28:07
Sonya Ramsey	What type of values did your parents try to instill in you when you were growing up?	28:07
Eva Gibbs Adams	Into children?	28:08
Sonya Ramsey	Yeah.	28:09
Eva Gibbs Adams	That's one thing, they really wanted the best values the one in my neighborhood. They wanted you to respect them as parents, respect the neighbors. If a neighbor would see me doing something that they knew my mother didn't approve of, that person could correct me and come and tell my mother, and I probably would get something from her.	28:10
Eva Gibbs Adams	There was not the anger which people have now. Kids went to school. Naturally, it was segregated school. They were much better off really to tell you the truth in a segregated school than they are in this integrated situation. Because back there, the Black teachers were interested in the children, trying to teach them how to get ahead, the ways of life, how to attain it and whatnot.	28:38
Eva Gibbs Adams	And of course, now if you go into the schools now, which is basically White teachers, they're pushing us back now. So we got a good [indistinct 00:27:58] here and we try to, NAACP, try to keep some in, but the Whites don't particularly care. Some of them do.	29:11
Eva Gibbs Adams	Now I will say that I work with some dedicated White teachers as well as Black ones in the integration situation. But in a segregated, you were going to learn before you were promoted. They didn't have this progressive promotion. Go through the grade knowing nothing and leave knowing nothing. And that's what handled a lot of our Black children back.	29:35
Eva Gibbs Adams	They brought the books home. Parents saw that they studied, most of the parents. Now we are always going to have a few who won't care anyway. But the kids brought their books home. Most of them knew because the parents wanted the kids to rise above themselves, because they hadn't had the opportunity and they wanted the children to.	30:10
Eva Gibbs Adams	So nine cases out of ten, when a kid ain't came from school, before you went out to play, you had homework. That's in a segregated situation. And you got your homework, whether it was right or wrong, you went through the process. So I think the Black parents put more value on how the children succeeded or developed than they do now, because we are having too many young mothers now. I can sit on my porch for days and almost cry to see all these 16-year-old kids with baby carriages. Not one, but two and everything.	30:36
Sonya Ramsey	I wanted to ask you about, do you have any remembrances of your elementary school and what were some of your teachers like?	31:18
Eva Gibbs Adams	I became a teacher because I was so impressed with my 4th grade teacher that I said, "If I grew up, I'm going to be a teacher just like she is." Now kids and I looked up to our teachers as a role model, whereas now they don't care how you, teacher or no teacher. But we did. We respected them. And I remember I had a friend we'd go to visit them like weekends, go and stay a little while with them.	31:26
Eva Gibbs Adams	And they don't look up the teachers now, but we did. We thought the teacher, the preacher, the parents, the preacher, and the teachers were the people that we were supposed to live up to their standards, but it's different now.	32:00
Sonya Ramsey	I wanted to ask you, I guess I know your high school years. Did you participate in any activities like the—	32:21
Eva Gibbs Adams	In high school?	32:26
Sonya Ramsey	Mm-hmm.	32:26
Eva Gibbs Adams	In high school I was in the Glee club. I was on the basketball team.	32:37
Sonya Ramsey	Oh, okay.	32:42
Eva Gibbs Adams	And I was in the French club and oh, the drama. I did drama.	32:44
Sonya Ramsey	Did you have—	32:52
Eva Gibbs Adams	Hmm?	32:53
Sonya Ramsey	Go on. I'm sorry.	32:54
Eva Gibbs Adams	No. I was just fixing to say, I started doing acting in high school in the Drama Department. And when I became old enough, they have what they call the Women's Federated Club, this national thing around here.	32:54
Sonya Ramsey	I wanted to ask, when you played basketball, did you ever get to travel to different cities?	33:19
Eva Gibbs Adams	Yeah. Well, we just went locally, you know what I mean? Outside about 10, 15 miles like that. But now, when I became a teacher here, it was segregated. Before they had certified physical-ed teachers, I did the high school girls physical-ed for four years, and each day they would send a high school teacher in the afternoon down to my 8th grade, and I did the physical-ed for four years. And we did travel a little bit with basketball, but some of the kids now will say something about it, even now, those that I taught.	33:24
Eva Gibbs Adams	And of course, I've always loved to dance. So when I went to college, of course, I was taking elementary education and I remembered all the little dances that we learned and I brought it here. And then, of course, I figured if I were going to teach the physical-ed for a while, that I would go to Hampton, Virginia and take nothing but health and physical-ed. So I went for 12-week sessions and took nothing but physical-ed and dancing.	34:09
Sonya Ramsey	What type of things did you teach women in physical education? Did they learn exercises or play games, or what kind of things did they do?	34:47
Eva Gibbs Adams	When I had them?	34:55
Sonya Ramsey	Mm-hmm.	34:56
Eva Gibbs Adams	We played softball. We played badminton. We played—we didn't play soccer at that time. But we had little ring games, little—well, I have to go back. After I finished Hampton's four years, then I went to New York University and I was taking health, health education. And of course, I came back and we'd have regular exercises and we had no gym, but we would always go through the routines of some type of exercises before we entered into our games.	34:56
Eva Gibbs Adams	And of course, when I was in New—oh, New York U, I was taking health. I went two summers at Columbia and went into the folk dancing under Michael Hermann, who was a folk dance specialist. And I did that over at Columbia in the International House. And of course, I learned things like the Jewish [indistinct 00:36:16] and Black Hawk Waltz, which was a New England waltz. And I did minor just tapping to a certain extent, ballet and loads of folk dances.	35:48
Eva Gibbs Adams	So I had charged, let me see. We had the one high school and we had two, three elementary schools. And I had to do the Mayday activities. We used to have Maydays, and this is the way we approached it. If there were four 1st grades, then I'd find a dance that was suitable for those children and I'd teach it to the teachers. They had to come to be taught.	36:36
Eva Gibbs Adams	And then, in order to get all of it done and all kids participate, it was like a full ring, if there were four classes, a full ring circles. So this 1st grade is doing just with the other one so you won't have to be doing one of these things. 2nd grade, the same thing. All 2nd grade teachers learn the same dance and taught it right on through.	37:09
Eva Gibbs Adams	Well, I did it for the whole city, the Black schools. And I was pregnant.	37:32
Sonya Ramsey	Oh my.	37:36
Eva Gibbs Adams	But I enjoyed it. I enjoyed my teaching. And I think after having taught 40 years, I only lost what I call lost, and I found out recently, it's not really lost. One student and that student has moved in my neighborhood around the corner. She wouldn't speak to me. I was interested to the point that I wanted to help her, her mother had tried to help her. Her mother was anxious for her to succeed.	37:39
Eva Gibbs Adams	So she was a pretty girl. Very lazy, very stubborn, very mean and I don't say that often about kids, but she was downright mean. So I gave her extra work to bring in so that I could give her a D. She didn't want to do it, but she did do it. She had three White teachers and she had me.	38:15
Eva Gibbs Adams	All right. When time came for promotion, the three White teachers gave her a straight F, and I gave her a D because of the extra work I had made her do. All right. I'm her home teacher, and the other teachers are the three White teachers. But before we could retain a student, we would have to get all of the teachers that had taught the child and the principal and discuss the child from a disciplinary angle to academic, whether the child showed interest, rude or whatnot, before we would—	38:42
Eva Gibbs Adams	So anyway, she was failed. That meant she had to repeat 8th grade. But her mother got on the telephone after the child took the card back, I had to write the card and transferred her marks. Oh, she didn't give me one piece out on that telephone. And I imagined the kid was in the room with her.	39:25
Eva Gibbs Adams	Well, she talked all she wanted to. I said, "You ought to be praising me. I'm the one that gave her just the passing mark because of the work. I wouldn't have just given it to her if she hadn't brought the work in." I said, "I'm the one that gave her the D." "Well, you might have changed some marks of the teacher, White teachers." I said, "Go over and ask her."	39:49
Eva Gibbs Adams	So anyway, the mother didn't bother about speaking to me for a long, long time. The child could have run right over me and wouldn't have spoken. So one day I was at the laundromat and somebody knew that I had taught, and I said they wanted to know something about my teaching. So I told them, I didn't know it was the girl's grandparents. I told them about this one child that would not speak to me and this and that. I said, and I was trying to help her.	40:13
Eva Gibbs Adams	I said, evidently the mother must have talked in front of her when she was piecing me out, because the kid wouldn't speak to me. Well, after that—Well, during the time we were talking, I found out it was the child's grandparents, and evidently they went and told the mother what I said. The next time I saw the mother, she almost ran to me to hug me and kiss me and everything. I said nothing but accepted her.	40:45
Eva Gibbs Adams	And of course, whenever she'd have this daughter that was in concern, she would pass, put her head up like this, wouldn't ever say anything. I speak to her, but she wouldn't answer. So anyway, I call myself, and then now I don't call myself. I did at that time call myself losing one student out of 40 years. But she's in the neighborhood and the other day they had fun day for the people up here, and she was there.	41:14
Eva Gibbs Adams	And I heard her say, "Hi, Ms. Adams." So I said, well, I guess she realizes that she was wrong and the mother was wrong, but other than that—	41:46
Sonya Ramsey	Okay. Well, I wanted to go back to when you were in high school. I wanted to ask what was the social life like and what was dating like during your high school years?	41:56
Eva Gibbs Adams	In high school?	42:08
Sonya Ramsey	Yeah.	42:08
Eva Gibbs Adams	We, dating was something you almost had to slip to do until you were a certain age. But now so far as these children having parties, during my years of high school, we had chaperone. Teachers would have to be at the parties or the dances. And of course, we had a good time with them, but kids did not have the cars to go off after the party. They had to go home. They had to walk home.	42:10
Eva Gibbs Adams	And a bunch of us would get together sometimes if one friend had a car, we'd couple off and just not go out of town. Just ride around the streets. And of course, when it came to the time for your boyfriend to come to see you, he would come to the house. If we were going out, you'd get permission from the mother, the parents, and you'd go on out. But you did have to have permission.	42:52
Sonya Ramsey	I wanted to ask, what college did you attend undergraduate years?	43:23
Eva Gibbs Adams	Hmm?	43:31
Sonya Ramsey	What college did you attend your undergraduate years?	43:31
Eva Gibbs Adams	Well, I went to Winston-Salem College.	43:32
Sonya Ramsey	Why did you select that college to attend?	43:34
Eva Gibbs Adams	I did. I know exactly why I selected it. At first, I wanted to be an elementary teacher, school teacher. And secondly, I knew that my sister was the only one that was going to—well, the main one. She was working in New York that was going to pay for my education, because my mother did not work out.	43:36
Eva Gibbs Adams	And I selected a school in Winston-Salem, because you could get a two-year normal with a B certificate and come out and teach. I didn't know how long her job was going to last. And so, I said, "I'll pick something that if it doesn't, it won't be a hardship on the family." So that's why I picked Winston-Salem.	43:57
Eva Gibbs Adams	I did the two years. I came out, but I did not stop going summer school. I finished my B.S degree through the summers. I'd work in the winter.	44:25
Sonya Ramsey	Okay. I wanted to ask you, what was Winston-Salem like as compared to New Bern?	44:36
Eva Gibbs Adams	Winston-Salem?	44:43
Sonya Ramsey	Mm-hmm.	44:43
Eva Gibbs Adams	A huge, big city. What you're talking about? Well, anyway, I remember when I was traveling and I had a train that left here and train left from New Bern. I hadn't been out of New Bern or vicinity before and when I got on a train, the only thing I could think of was a hymn, "lead down me on and I am far from home."	44:45
Eva Gibbs Adams	But anyway, when I got to Winston, it was mainly a girl school. You could almost count the boys on that. But I was very much impressed with it because I thought their method of teaching and what they did was pertinent to what we were going to need up with here. And fortunately, I had one teacher, my critic teacher, who made us make lesson plans for one teacher school, two teacher schools and whatnot.	45:17
Eva Gibbs Adams	So we had done that, and we had done it on the basis of just one particular room. And fortunately, I had done that because when I first came out of the two-year school, I taught in a rural district where there was one teacher.	45:54
Sonya Ramsey	Where was that?	46:15
Eva Gibbs Adams	It was outside of Vanceboro, North Carolina. I had about 26 students in the whole house, in the whole school. That's from 1st grade through 7th.	46:16
Sonya Ramsey	Oh, okay.	46:34
Eva Gibbs Adams	But see, I had been trained to know how to keep everybody busy and on the level in which they were supposed to be studying, because we had made lesson plans for them.	46:34
Sonya Ramsey	What were some of the problems the students faced—	46:48

Eva Gibbs Adams	—to build a fire at school, and the Whites were riding, they'd throw things out the buses, they were riding buses to school. They would throw things out of the bus at the Black kids walking. Of course, sometimes they'd get to school, they were real cold and they'd got to get warmed up and whatnot.	0:01
Eva Gibbs Adams	They wanted to learn, and I tried to teach them, and evidently must have done some good because they wanted me to come back. They said I had done more in one year than some of the teachers had done who'd been out there five or six years. So I was proud of that, but having been given a job here in the city—	0:26
Sonya Ramsey	Oh, you had gotten a job in New Bern by that time?	0:52
Eva Gibbs Adams	I came on here.	0:54
Sonya Ramsey	How long did you teach in Vanceboro? [indistinct 00:00:59]	0:56
Eva Gibbs Adams	Two years, uh-huh.	0:59
Sonya Ramsey	Okay.	1:00
Eva Gibbs Adams	People were very friendly. Every weekend when I'd come home, because I stayed out there with them during the week so I could learn about them. They wanted teachers, this family was would say, "Bring your teacher home to spend the night, have dinner with us." In that manner, and they would just give me more farm things to bring home, vegetables and canned fruits, and whatnot.	1:02
Eva Gibbs Adams	It was very nice, but I'd rather been here in the city and I still meet some of those people now who still live out there. The kids were good. They'd make the fire because I had never made the fires in any pot belly stoves, even though I'm right here in this house, but I didn't ever have to make any fires or anything. I just happened to be one of the lucky ones.	1:30
Sonya Ramsey	I wanted to go back and ask you, when you were at Winston-Salem, what was the social life like there?	2:02
Eva Gibbs Adams	It wasn't too much there because of the boys, there weren't enough boys, so they'd just have dances sometimes, but girl to girl, and they cut that out. If you went downtown, they'd have to go in a group and have to be chaperoned by some higher grade, maybe a sophomore or junior, or somebody like that would have to take you.	2:07
Eva Gibbs Adams	But you went in a group and then you came back that way. If you went walking, you could walk on the outside of the college, but you had to be back a certain time. We even had restrictions on bedtime, lights out, and if you didn't turn your light out, the matron would pull the whole switch. Of course, it was a lot of fun because the kids would go to town, they'd come back, they'd bring by something to cook and had the hot plates. Of course, sometimes you'll smell all this ham or something all over the dormitory where they were cooking in the rooms.	2:37
Eva Gibbs Adams	A bunch of them, the matrons sliding down the hall, come out, "Who's that cooking?" If she'd go up to the back, they threw things out the window and everything, but the odor was still in the rooms. The ones downstairs who weren't involved, some of those upstairs, everybody came out in the hall to watch her go upstairs and look for this cooking. But of course, she found a room because naturally, if you going cook in a room, bacon or pork, or ham or something, they were going to smell it.	3:31
Eva Gibbs Adams	Such things like that was amusing, and then of course, sometimes they would pull a little day bed or something they had in the hall up, so they'd pull it across the steps. When you got to the top step, instead of being able to turn, you'd fall across the bed. But we had great restrictions. You had to be in a certain time and you really was supposed to have had those lights out a certain time.	4:07
Eva Gibbs Adams	One night, there were about seven or eight of us in one room, just sitting down talking and whatnot, and it was time for the lights to be turned now. They heard miss lady came up the steps, and of course, she got so near that you couldn't run out. So we got in the closet, the clothes closet, and closed the thing, and she came in and she was just talking to the ones who lived in there. She was saying, "I heard something in here."	4:39
Eva Gibbs Adams	And of course, the people in the closet got thicker, it's like, grinning and everything. Finally, she followed that sound and she pulled the curtain back, she said, "You better get in your rooms or take you to the principal." But it was interesting.	5:14
Sonya Ramsey	What was the year that you finished?	5:30
Eva Gibbs Adams	Hmm?	5:30
Sonya Ramsey	What was the year that you finished?	5:39
Eva Gibbs Adams	What was the year I finished?	5:40
Sonya Ramsey	Mm-hmm.	5:40
Eva Gibbs Adams	'45, that's when I really got my degree.	5:41
Sonya Ramsey	Okay. Did World War II affect you?	5:47
Eva Gibbs Adams	Hmm?	5:48
Sonya Ramsey	Did World War II affect you and your family, or anyone you knew in any way?	5:49
Eva Gibbs Adams	The war?	5:52
Sonya Ramsey	Mm-hmm.	5:52
Eva Gibbs Adams	Mm-mm, it did not.	5:55
Sonya Ramsey	No? You didn't know anybody who had to go fight?	5:55
Eva Gibbs Adams	None of my brothers, I had three brothers at the time, and they didn't have to go. Mainly, I guess it was because my mother, they had to help support her since she didn't ever go back to work after my daddy passed.	5:59
Eva Gibbs Adams	Now, I had one brother, my youngest brother that I lost in '88, who stopped school in 9th grade after my daddy died so that he could help take care of us. To see that I had some of the things that my friends who had all of their families living, my brother had opened an account downtown for me and I could get anything that my friends had.	6:19
Eva Gibbs Adams	He was very talented. I was so sorry that he couldn't have gone through the school. But see, I was kind of small then, but he didn't miss a week after he got married. He didn't miss one week bringing my mother money over here and his wife was [indistinct 00:07:11]. I loved his wife as much as I loved my sister. So, we've been a close-knit family, mm-hmm.	6:53
Sonya Ramsey	Did you have to work when you were at Winston-Salem?	7:20
Eva Gibbs Adams	They give you duty work.	7:25
Sonya Ramsey	Oh, okay.	7:26
Eva Gibbs Adams	Scrubbing the halls, and washing the dishes, and waiting the tables, because we had family style. That's the biggest thing. Let me see.	7:26
Eva Gibbs Adams	Yeah, you scrub the halls, you serve the tables, you might have to wash dishes, and of course, sometimes I had to go down and prepare the vegetables. If you had a friend that went down, maybe if they were doing collards or cabbage, or something of that nature, they probably would tell you, "Don't eat the vegetables today." Because we just shook handfuls and put it in. So it was quite amusing, yes.	7:41
Sonya Ramsey	You said you liked to dance, did you ever want to be a professional dancer?	8:14
Eva Gibbs Adams	A dancer?	8:21
Sonya Ramsey	Mm-hmm.	8:22
Eva Gibbs Adams	No, I just like to teach it.	8:22
Sonya Ramsey	Okay.	8:22
Eva Gibbs Adams	I came back after I had had all the folk dancing, and the dancing that I got during the summer under Nancy Parks, she was White, she used to teach at Chapel Hill. She was a dance instructor, not a physical ed teacher, she was strictly a dance instructor.	8:23
Eva Gibbs Adams	Of course, she came from there to Hampton. I took under her at Hampton, and the last time I heard from her, she was in Greece after she left Hampton, but she loved the Black boys.	8:42
Sonya Ramsey	Oh, okay.	8:58
Eva Gibbs Adams	She and her husband broke up and she had one little boy, Chris, and of course her ex-husband and his girlfriend moved her to Hampton, got her settled. Then they went on and got married.	8:59
Eva Gibbs Adams	But she was very, very good. She was a dancer. Well, I opened up a little dance studio and I taught it on Saturdays.	9:14
Sonya Ramsey	Okay.	9:24
Eva Gibbs Adams	Mm-hmm, and I started them with tapping, I started them with ballet, that was in the school. It's my private thing, but other than that, in school, during physical ed period, we did folk dancing, we did creative dancing, and just a lot of things I like to do.	9:25
Sonya Ramsey	When you had your own dancing school, did you have your own building or where did you—	9:45
Eva Gibbs Adams	No, I rented a building on Main Street, it's now called the Ellis Hall, but every Saturday we would go up there.	9:49
Sonya Ramsey	How did you go about getting students for your school?	9:57
Eva Gibbs Adams	Hmm?	10:00
Sonya Ramsey	How did you go about getting students for your school?	10:01
Eva Gibbs Adams	Well, I'll tell you, most of the students were my friends' children, and of course, then they would tell their friends, and then that's the way it was built up. About the school dancing, the physical ed, when I had dancing part of it, I had taught the basic steps for tapping, and I guess after those girls got to be mothers, they taught some of the children that I was going to teach the same steps that I taught them.	10:03
Eva Gibbs Adams	When I would start something like tapping, they said, "My mother was teaching me that. Ms. Adams, they said you taught it to them." So they carried it right on. I enjoyed it. Even now, this year—no, the senior citizens connected with the recreational department.	10:56
Eva Gibbs Adams	Two years ago when they had their fun day, I was going to teach the senior citizens a Jewish share. It's something like a Jewish square dance, which requires eight people for a square. Well, most of them had arthritis or cramps, or something. Lord have mercy, I was older than some of them. They would get out of the steps and then maybe get a pain or something.	11:20
Eva Gibbs Adams	But anyway, I taught them a dance, it was going to be the Jewish share, but we had to not call it a square dance because I only had six people to remain in it because others couldn't get it. So we called it Stanley White Swingsters. That's the name of the recreation, the center.	11:53
Sonya Ramsey	Okay.	12:18
Eva Gibbs Adams	He was a Colored guy that had charge of recreation here, but he passed sometime back, so they named it for him. And of course, they did it, they had it in the papers here and whatnot. They had the full skirts on, the white blouses, and the flower in they head and their hair. And of course, they got recognition from the Sun Journal. Then a lady who passed last year had her 60th birthday, she has a beautiful lawn 'round by the cemetery, and she wanted them to do the dance at her birthday party because she had it out though.	12:20
Eva Gibbs Adams	Of course, this year, we got—let me see, one, two, there were three of us. We were going to take off The Supremes, but we weren't going to sing the songs, but we were going to just [indistinct 00:13:30]. We were going to wear these evening dresses, it was integrated, it was at the White Recreation Center here last month, no, it was in June.	13:00
Eva Gibbs Adams	We got these big wigs and of course, one of the ladies got sick the morning she's supposed to come, so my friend Ms. Bryant, who was very active, but she doesn't bother about dancing too much, so she said she'd take her place. She brought her evening dress and these big wigs for us, and I was supposed to have been, what's the—	13:41
Sonya Ramsey	Diana Ross?	14:04
Eva Gibbs Adams	Diana Ross. I'm supposed to lead the thing, and we were singing "Baby, Baby." The lady who was taking care of the record didn't know there was a little break in there, and I think Annabelle, that's Ms. Bryant, I think she had forgotten that we were supposed to pause a little bit, hesitate, and picked it up. She started off the stage, and of course I was leading the thing whatnot, and everything.	14:05
Eva Gibbs Adams	By the time we got halfway back to the dressing room, this record comes out just singing, they knew we weren't singing bad because the record. So it was lots of fun there. Mm-hmm.	14:34
Sonya Ramsey	I wanted to ask, when you went to New York to school, what was your impression of New York City?	14:46
Eva Gibbs Adams	One thing about it, New York City where I stayed, I stayed with a first cousin of mine who lived over a bar. Well, in the two blocks in which we lived, it wasn't bad even though the bar was down there, and it wasn't dirty, but they had certain sections of our Black people, around Manhattan. I just thought it was awful at the way those streets looked with the trash and garbage out.	14:59
Eva Gibbs Adams	And then they come down here and say, "I'm from New York." And don't say "how are you, how are you?" Things of that nature. But on a whole, there's too much crime. You're afraid sometimes, most of the time, and you just have to pick locations that are suitable for living there.	15:31
Eva Gibbs Adams	Now, the other years when I was in New York, see, I stayed with her the first summer, and the next time, I moved up on St. Nicholas Avenue up near the stadiums and whatnot.	16:02
Sonya Ramsey	Was this during the 1950s?	16:18
Eva Gibbs Adams	Hmm?	16:20
Sonya Ramsey	Was this during the 1950s?	16:21
Eva Gibbs Adams	Yeah.	16:21
Sonya Ramsey	Okay.	16:22
Eva Gibbs Adams	'51 or something.	16:22
Sonya Ramsey	What did you think of St. Nicholas?	16:28
Eva Gibbs Adams	Hmm?	16:29
Sonya Ramsey	What did you think of St. Nicholas Avenue?	16:30
Eva Gibbs Adams	Between 153rd, way up, they call it Sugar Hill, between 153rd, and let me see—between 155 and 185.	16:33
Sonya Ramsey	Did you live by yourself or did you get a roommate?	16:50
Eva Gibbs Adams	No, no, no. There was a teacher from Chapel Hill, an elderly person, she taught here one year, but I knew her when I was in undergrad school at Winston-Salem. She was teaching in the city, and of course, she was friendly with the librarian over at Winston, and of course I helped in the library and I knew a lot of the friends.	16:54
Eva Gibbs Adams	Anyway, the way I got in touch with Mrs. Turner, that's the lady that I roomed with in New York the second year, she and the librarian were good friends and one night she came over, the librarian had to go to a meeting with the president and they left me in the library. She had told me, she said, "Don't let any of those city school teachers check out any books." 'Cause they would come and study. She said, "But don't let them check out any books."	17:19
Eva Gibbs Adams	So this one comes up and says, "I would like to—" She was very Irish, "I would like to check out these books." I said, "Well, I'm very sorry, Mrs. Dunlap," I said that no books were supposed to be checked out off the campus, for people off campus. "Oh, well, we are good friends." I said, "But I'm sorry." I said, "Now, she's in a teacher's meeting if you want to go down there and she okays it, very well."	17:53
Eva Gibbs Adams	That's the way we met. And he came here to teach one year, and then she left and went to Chapel Hill. Well, I said, all right to say this, she was going to summer school at New York U, and she knew I was coming north, so she told me not to try to find a room because the lady who owned this apartment was going to be in Florida for the summer and she had told her she could have charge of the house. So I rented a room there and she had a room, so that's how I happened to get up there. Mm-hmm. Very nice.	18:24
Sonya Ramsey	Had you married by that time?	19:01
Eva Gibbs Adams	I got married in 1941.	19:03
Sonya Ramsey	Oh, okay. How did you meet your husband?	19:04
Eva Gibbs Adams	I met Ernest Adams—I'm not married now.	19:17
Sonya Ramsey	Oh, okay.	19:21
Eva Gibbs Adams	I'm divorced.	19:22
Sonya Ramsey	Oh, okay.	19:22
Eva Gibbs Adams	I met him through his stepmother. His stepmother was down here with the—that's because she married his daddy, her first husband. She lived, there was a house right on the other side of my lot. And she—no, no, no. He had gone. Yeah, she was with him.	19:24
Eva Gibbs Adams	So then she went back to Goldsboro, and this husband died, and she met Ernest's father, and he was going to Hampton College. So she would write and she'd tell me she wanted me to meet her son, really was her stepson, and I stopped through there once, and that's how we met.	19:46
Eva Gibbs Adams	He was very slow and everything my grandson used to say, they call me Gigi, he said, "Gigi, why did you and Granddaddy separate?" I said, "I don't know." He said, "Well, I do. He was too slow for you." But we didn't have the arguments or anything, but I don't know, it just was not—I'm an outgoing person. I like participation and wholesome things.	20:12
Eva Gibbs Adams	So I just came on home. I stayed married for three years, I wanted me a child, and I wanted it to be legal, so I had my daughter who's in Atlanta. She's a band teacher, she finished Virginia State, and Vivian is 50. All of her children—	20:46
Sonya Ramsey	Oh, be careful of the microphone.	21:10
Eva Gibbs Adams	Oh, I forgot that one.	21:11
Sonya Ramsey	You want me to—I'll look at the picture.	21:18
Eva Gibbs Adams	Okay.	21:18
Sonya Ramsey	Okay.	21:18
Eva Gibbs Adams	She went there and took music, she was a band instructor in Atlanta. But in '86, I believe that's our last family reunion in Baltimore, she used to tell me when she called, she said, "Mother, sometimes my eyes black out when I'm coming home." I said, "Well, you have to be careful about that on those expressways in Atlanta."	21:18
Eva Gibbs Adams	It finally came to the point when she came to the family reunion, she told everybody but me that she was having great trouble with her eyesight. Well, she had just bought this van and she had the three children, one girl and two boys, the boys are older, so she helped them to drive from Atlanta to Baltimore, I had one niece there.	21:43
Eva Gibbs Adams	After that, when she went back the next term, she just resigned and she went around with 99% blindness until last October, I was in Atlanta at the particular time, but she works at a bank. I'll tell you how she happened to get there.	22:08
Eva Gibbs Adams	Vivian's always been aggressive, and if she is my daughter, she's smart. She was 99% blind, and I guess when she was about 90% blind, she had to stop teaching. She decided that she would go over to Georgia State and take a course in computer service. She did.	22:32
Sonya Ramsey	How did she see it [indistinct 00:23:14]?	23:06
Eva Gibbs Adams	Huh?	23:13
Sonya Ramsey	How did she do that? How did she see?	23:13
Eva Gibbs Adams	She didn't. She had 90%—I mean 90% blind, but she had 10%.	23:13
Sonya Ramsey	Okay.	23:14
Eva Gibbs Adams	And being a person with a strong will, because the kids said they weren't going to let her sit up in there and mope and you know, worry. Anyway, she took the course, and the people in Atlanta hire people with low vision, so when the lady from the Wachovia Bank came over for some interviews, she selected Vivian.	23:15
Eva Gibbs Adams	They gave her this job down at the Wachovia Bank, but the state of Georgia bought her the computer that talks to her. While they were waiting for that computer to arrive, they sent her to a listening school. Now, I don't know anything about this, but they sent her to Marietta to a listening school.	23:40
Eva Gibbs Adams	What she couldn't see, she could hear. And so in October, when she came home from work, she said, "Mother." I said, "What?" She says, "I think I've lost all of my vision." Oh, I wanted to cry so bad, but I couldn't do it in front of her.	24:04
Eva Gibbs Adams	She went on, she had lost the eyesight, but she was so active, she knew how to get around in the church, she knew how to get around the house. She had taken enough Braille, 'cause she went to the Center for Impaired Vision before because she said, "Mother, I don't know what—" That's before she got blind. She said, "Because I don't know whether I'm going to lose my eyesight totally or not." She said, "I do want to learn enough so that when I put vegetables in my freezer, I'll know whether it's broccoli or whether it's spinach or something, enough for that." Which she did.	24:24
Eva Gibbs Adams	So they hired her over at Wachovia Bank, and when she lost her eyesight completely, the president told her that her work had been so good, people had called in and said how efficient she was, and I read some of the letters that people wrote and said, "Your employee Mrs. Huggins is a jewel." She said, "And because of her, I will still do business with you."	25:03
Eva Gibbs Adams	They told my daughter that she can have that job as long as she wants to. The supervisor and all of the people that work around her area said, "Anything you can't do, we'll do it." Now, she gets calls, she can explain the whole process to the people, and she does very well. Every day, she's out. She had an orchestra with her church choir, and she's going right on.	25:28
Eva Gibbs Adams	She came down the 2nd of July, she flew down here to spend part of her vacation with me, and I flew back with her and stayed a week.	25:59
Sonya Ramsey	I wanted to ask, when she was a little girl, when you were raising her, how did you manage childcare with your teaching?	26:07
Eva Gibbs Adams	How did she manage?	26:14
Sonya Ramsey	How did you manage childcare with your teaching?	26:15
Eva Gibbs Adams	Childcare when she was little?	26:18
Sonya Ramsey	Mm-hmm.	26:19
Eva Gibbs Adams	Beautifully. The thing about it, I always wanted her to be somebody you people speak of now in terms like that. And of course, I would do things and say things to her and make her conscious of it.	26:20
Eva Gibbs Adams	Now, when she was little, see, I put my shoes up. I didn't know whether the tornado was coming last night or not, I live here by myself. When I feel like moving, I do. When I don't, I won't. However, a girl was supposed to come help me today, actually hasn't shown up.	26:39
Eva Gibbs Adams	Anyway, Vivian was easy to train. I put her in the Catholic school when she was four years old and I put her in there for this reason, she was a smart type. Her IQ was pretty good. So I said if I'm going to teach and she's got to be going from pillar to post, I'm going to put her in someplace where she will learn something.	26:55
Eva Gibbs Adams	I didn't want her to just excel or anything, but what she would hear and be around the whole day when I was in teaching would be something constructive. So she went there when she was four years old, she progressed nicely, when she was five, she went to 2nd grade, I took her in public school then. She went from Catholic school to the public school in 2nd grade.	27:29
Eva Gibbs Adams	Around the house, naturally, I had spoiled her to the extent that she was lazy about doing anything, but she would do, very obedient.	28:03
Sonya Ramsey	Did you have to get babysitters and things like that?	28:13
Eva Gibbs Adams	Fortunately, there was lady who had been living in the neighborhood, I guess when I was young, and she didn't particularly have any place to stay. So I gave her a room here and gave that—because my mother died on the steps out there when Vivian was a year and a half, was just about a year and a half, so I got Ms. Cora, as we call her, to come and live with us.	28:20
Eva Gibbs Adams	Of course, if I had to go out, she was well taken care of even though miss lady was not educated. Vivian somehow escaped her vocabulary because she'd have, "Vivian come on, write my grocery order." Vivian would go, she was conscious of the fact she might say, "I want four cans of the ghetti." You know what that was? Spaghetti. Things like that. Vivian kept that thing up and she does it right now.	28:57
Eva Gibbs Adams	I'm just wondering how she escaped not talking like she did, but now she was a number one babysitter, built in babysitter. Now I had taught Vivian. I said, "Now Vivian," when she was little, she'd walk around, 'cause this table's younger, but if she'd go to your house and walk around, see something pretty, she'd want to touch. I taught her in the house, not to touch, but look.	29:37
Eva Gibbs Adams	She'd walk all around everything in here when she was young and say, "Pretty." But she would not touch it. You know how some children come and have everything off, but I tried to bring her up to know the values of life, to be sharing, to be caring, and that's exactly the way she turned out.	30:07
Sonya Ramsey	Did you and your family, when you were growing up, did your family attend church services here in New Bern?	30:29
Eva Gibbs Adams	Did what?	30:34
Sonya Ramsey	Did your family attend church services here in New Bern?	30:35
Eva Gibbs Adams	Oh, yes.	30:38
Sonya Ramsey	What church did your family attend?	30:38
Eva Gibbs Adams	My mother, my sister, my brothers and I, we attended the Baptist Church, Gilfield Baptist.	30:40
Sonya Ramsey	Gilfield?	30:55
Eva Gibbs Adams	My daddy attended First Baptist. We were church going people. Now, when I became 12 years old, all of my friends and pals lived out like Burn Street before the fire and everything, but anyway, they went to the Methodist church, St. Peters.	30:56
Eva Gibbs Adams	When I was 12 years old, I started going Sunday school down there with them. From there, I joined the junior church and from the junior church, I joined the senior church.	31:18
Sonya Ramsey	At St. Peter's?	31:29
Eva Gibbs Adams	Hmm? St. Peter's, it's AME Zion Church. It's the mother church of Methodism in the South. St. Peter's AME Zion. While I'm there, I am president of the senior choir.	31:31
Sonya Ramsey	Okay. I wanted to ask you, you mentioned about the fire, do people ever tell you stories about the fire or anything?	31:53
Eva Gibbs Adams	Now, I can tell you what I remember.	32:03
Sonya Ramsey	Okay.	32:10
Eva Gibbs Adams	Because I was a kid.	32:11
Sonya Ramsey	Mm-hmm.	32:11
Eva Gibbs Adams	That morning, my mother had let me go around—at least she didn't let me go, she had my sister to take me over on Main Street. Now, it used to be Pine Street, it's near George Street. You know where those tennis courts are? Have you been out that way?	32:12
Sonya Ramsey	I think so.	32:27
Eva Gibbs Adams	Hmm?	32:27
Sonya Ramsey	Mm-hmm.	32:27
Eva Gibbs Adams	Well, anyway, my aunt used to live out there. She used to live in the house right next to that cemetery on the opposite side. And we, my two cousins and I, were out in the yard making mud cakes.	32:29
Eva Gibbs Adams	That same morning before I went out, the mill caught afire. The lumber mill, something over there. Well, when I was over playing in the dirt with my cousins making cakes and whatnot, we had an alarm system here for fire. That boy, I'm telling you, it sound like the world was coming to an end when it would blow.	32:48
Eva Gibbs Adams	But say for instance, if this was 57, my area and up further, 58, anytime that thing would blow, it would blow five and then stop, and then it would blow seven times and then stop, well, you knew the area in which the fire was. That's where this fire started was way over somewhere in there by Craven Terrace, and it was leaping so that it would just come all the way across the street, the wind was in it.	33:13
Eva Gibbs Adams	The thing about it, as I've gotten old, I think this might have helped us spread it. They dynamited some of the houses trying to contain the fire, but that fire went across the street and it burned up all from Craven Terrace all out there where West Street, out there where the cemetery is on George Street, you where the police station is?	33:56
Sonya Ramsey	Mm-hmm.	34:30
Eva Gibbs Adams	All of that section from way back over to Terrace all the way to the railroad, it skipped over one or two buildings, all that fire skipped over one or two buildings. I do know that—well, my sister came and got me and I came on home because they didn't know whether it was going to come up this way or not. My mother was a quick thinker and she thought about a house that was vacant around the street, and she ran around and told a man who owned it to save it for her sister.	34:34
Eva Gibbs Adams	And so then, we got her, where I was, to move around this section. So she saved quite a bit because she sent a man with a cart and a horse out there to get the things, and she came over here to live.	35:10
Eva Gibbs Adams	Now, right after the fire, I do know that the Red Cross furnished all of these tents, and they called it Tent City, and the people who lost their homes and who wanted to live in there and didn't have any place to go lived in there until they were able to get something.	35:25
Eva Gibbs Adams	Now, one cruel thing I think the city did was to take the land where that police station is, where the ballpark is, and coming back where the cemetery is, and the Black people had their best homes up there. Drugist, pharmacists, and teachers and whatnot, and they would not let them rebuild. They put the ballpark there. That was the armory, where the police station is, that was the armory. No place on George Street would they let the Blacks rebuild. That was a cruel thing, I thought, and they got a cemetery in one section of it. They did that wrong. That was quite dirty, I think.	35:49
Sonya Ramsey	That was in 1922, the fire?	36:43
Eva Gibbs Adams	Hmm?	36:43
Sonya Ramsey	The fire was in 1922?	36:43
Eva Gibbs Adams	Yes, 1922.	36:43
Sonya Ramsey	Okay.	36:43
Eva Gibbs Adams	Now, in our clubhouse, we have a picture of Tent City. I don't know who furnished us with that, but we got a little clubhouse on West Street near this [indistinct 00:36:58].	36:47
Sonya Ramsey	What club is it?	36:58
Eva Gibbs Adams	Hmm?	37:00
Sonya Ramsey	What club is it?	37:00
Eva Gibbs Adams	That's the one I told you about, we called it Climbers, that's ours. But it is a branch of the Negro Women's Federated Club.	37:02
Sonya Ramsey	Okay, I guess—	37:13
Eva Gibbs Adams	It's right in front of that little hospital.	37:13
Sonya Ramsey	I guess I wanted to ask you about during the '50s and the '60s, what were some of the organizations in which you belonged to?	37:17
Eva Gibbs Adams	During the '50s and the '60s?	37:23
Sonya Ramsey	Mm-hmm.	37:23
Eva Gibbs Adams	Well, I belonged to too much. The book club, the arts and craft.	37:28
Sonya Ramsey	Were these women's clubs, or were men and women both?	37:39
Eva Gibbs Adams	Those are women's clubs.	37:42
Sonya Ramsey	Okay.	37:43
Eva Gibbs Adams	Mm-hmm. I belong to the—what about church?	37:47
Sonya Ramsey	Oh, that's good, church—	37:48
Eva Gibbs Adams	Missionaries.	37:48
Sonya Ramsey	Mm-hmm.	37:48
Eva Gibbs Adams	I was president of the Missionary Society, I have been. I have been in charge of the youth choir, and after most of the youth left, the preacher still wanted a choir, so I got the young adult choir, and we were going to name it, this preacher was a naming person, he liked the name the organizations.	37:51
Eva Gibbs Adams	A lady that had had the choir during my elementary and high school days was named Nanny Holly Martin, and so we named the choir Nanny Holly Martin, and I remained president of that up until I think the last year. I am a counselor for it, advisor, and I'm coordinator for the choir's music in my church now.	38:15
Eva Gibbs Adams	Of course, we went to church. My mother and daddy said they didn't care what denomination we chose, but we had to go to church, we had to go to Sunday school. If you didn't go to those places, shame on you. You didn't get anywhere to go on Sunday.	38:42
Eva Gibbs Adams	Now on Sundays after Sunday school, we used to have Sunday school at St. Peter's at 1:00. Well, I had a little group, you know how you have a little friends down the church, and every Sunday, we would walk down to the waterfront on East Front Street and we'd go one particular way because they knew there was going to be some little White children out there meddling us, and we'd meddle them right back.	38:58
Eva Gibbs Adams	They'd follow us, but we never had any fights or anything like that, but we would go down there every Sunday to the waterfront and was happy. Where children now, they don't like things like that. Of course, we had a fire museum, I don't think that was in existence, but we went to educational things, whatever it was, and plays. Yeah, we were church, church going people.	39:26
Sonya Ramsey	Did you belong to any sororities or things like that?	39:56
Eva Gibbs Adams	No, it's the strangest thing, most people say. Now, when the AKA sorority was organized here, my best friend organized it, so therefore she wanted me to join. But see, when I was at Winston, they didn't have any sororities.	40:00
Eva Gibbs Adams	For some reason, I don't know what reason, but I did not affiliate. Of course, all of my friends right now are AKAs. I believe I have—I mean those who are in sororities. I got more AKA friends than I don't know what. I used to help Mrs. Daniels, for which the school is named for her, FRA Daniels out there on West Street.	40:22
Sonya Ramsey	Mm-hmm.	40:53
Eva Gibbs Adams	Well, his wife taught me French and she was like a mother to me even after I started teaching. I taught a cotillion for the debutante ball for her AKAs.	40:54
Sonya Ramsey	You taught them the dances?	41:11
Eva Gibbs Adams	Yeah.	41:11
Sonya Ramsey	Okay.	41:11
Eva Gibbs Adams	For the debutante ball, they always have special things. When they used to have their little meetings with them, each soro was supposed to bring a sandwiches or something, I've done so much for that sorority. But I still see how they have to work and I never would commit myself to joining it. Yet, most of my friends are AKAs. I probably have two that are Deltas.	41:13
Sonya Ramsey	Did you ever participate in political organizations like the NAACP of things like that?	41:44
Eva Gibbs Adams	Voters League. I have worked on the polls as a registrar and they're trying to get me going as a judge this year, but I'm not going to go because it's too boring for me. You stay there all day long and just certain periods, maybe before people go to work, you have quite a few, and then lunchtime, and oh boy, when they get off from work.	41:52
Eva Gibbs Adams	The thing that I don't—I enjoyed it to a certain extent as a registrar, but I did not want to accept this judgeship that they wanted me to take this year. The judge's duty is to see that everything is tabulated right. What that machine says, your books must say, and if not, you don't leave until you find a mistake and you have to be over there by 7:00. So I told her no, I was sorry, I had worked over there, not as judge, but just registering the people, I said, "I'm sorry darling, but I can't take that."	42:19
Sonya Ramsey	I wanted to ask, back in the '50s, was it hard for Blacks to register to vote then?	43:08
Eva Gibbs Adams	Not as many voted. They weren't vote conscious. Not many of them voted, but they used to have you to read something, read part of the Constitution or something, but they don't do that now. They have free will now, but I guess back there, they had a little trouble voting and make you read where they wouldn't make the Whites read.	43:17
Sonya Ramsey	Did you vote then?	43:45
Eva Gibbs Adams	Hmm?	43:46
Sonya Ramsey	Did you vote during that time?	43:47
Eva Gibbs Adams	Yes, I've been voting ever since I've been grown.	43:49
Sonya Ramsey	I got another question I wanted to ask you about Cherry Point. What do you think Cherry Point's influence on the Black community?	43:53
Eva Gibbs Adams	What'd you say about it?	44:03
Sonya Ramsey	What do you think has been Cherry Point's impact on the Black community?	44:03
Eva Gibbs Adams	Oh, it's about 100% New Bern and the area around here, because I was just talking last night, I said, "We don't have too many industries around here for people to make a living." People come from New Bern and various little sections around New Bern.	44:06
Eva Gibbs Adams	In fact, they come, I think as far as Washington, North Carolina. Without that, we just would be at a loss. I think it would really add to crime if they had taken Cherry Point. So I think Cherry Point is a great, great help.	44:36
Sonya Ramsey	What was New Bern like before they built Cherry Point?	44:59
Eva Gibbs Adams	They worked at the mill, and that was just one mill, they didn't have Bosch, or whatever it is. They didn't have Hatteras where they make boats, and I forgot they said the boat place down the water.	45:00
Eva Gibbs Adams	But anyway, Hatteras make some boats for all over the country. Walter Cronkite was down here with his vote, I think it was two years ago, but he didn't want the people to know it because he knew they would crowd and see a lot of people park their boats here now because it's cheaper. Have you been to the Sheraton?	45:22
Sonya Ramsey	Yes, I've been past there.	45:50
Eva Gibbs Adams	Well, you should go in there and look in the back at the boats, people bring the boats from everywhere. The guy that was on Bonanza, I know when he came through here to get his horse, the one that died, he came to get his boat fixed here.	45:55
Eva Gibbs Adams	Well, now, I'm saying that without Hatteras, Bosch, and there's another one, and the mill doesn't have too many people over there now, there wouldn't be much for them to do. So Cherry Point, if Cherry Point was taken away from us, we wouldn't have anything. I think it really would lead to crime where the people wouldn't have.	46:10
Sonya Ramsey	Okay. I had another question I wanted to ask. Did you ever notice any discrimination among Blacks based on skin color?	46:38

Eva Gibbs Adams	Very smart, lovely person. We loved her as dear as we did the others, but she got the inferiority complex because she was a little bit darker. We'd have to go and pull her out where the others of us would decide where we're going to meet. But other—I don't know too much of that. Not too much of that there.	0:01
Sonya Ramsey	Did you ever notice any teachers that would show favoritism to students based on that, or based on who their parents were and things like that?	0:25
Eva Gibbs Adams	Did what?	0:33
Sonya Ramsey	Did you ever notice any teachers when you were in school who showed favoritism because of that or because of who their children's parents were and things like that?	0:34
Eva Gibbs Adams	Well, no, I don't. Frankly speaking, I don't, and I didn't.	0:44
Sonya Ramsey	Okay.	0:52
Eva Gibbs Adams	Because things like this, when I was teaching over at the H.J. MacDonald school, that's the place I retired, I found that the White kids were more friendly to the teachers than the Black ones, even though I was a Black teacher. The only thing they would say, they would say things like—White kids would say, "Goodbye, hope you have a lovely evening," or something to the teacher when they're going out, and the Black ones just strut out. Then, if they see one at the desk talking, maybe asking what you're going to do because they ask personal questions. Then the Blacks would say, "Oh, she makes me sick," talking about the White kids. They are just showing their manners and respect by coming up and wishing you have a good night or something and see you tomorrow, or something like that. So, I don't know.	0:56
Eva Gibbs Adams	I noticed this, though. Every little thing that the Whites would do and the Colored had not been doing it, they took on the bad habits. Our Blacks took on the little habits that we wouldn't like for them to take on. Say, for instance, kissing in the hall, the boys and the Whites. And before when we had segregated school, a kid wouldn't let a teacher see them stand up there kissing and hugging. Now, our Blacks just took right to it. And little things like the little bad things that we would want them to take from the Whites. We wanted them to get in there and try to excel them in their work or do something like that, but that didn't matter to them. But those other things, like smoking, also. The Blacks wouldn't have let us seen them smoke before the Whites did. And so they got to the point, little things like that, they picked up, but they didn't pick up the habits that they should have picked up.	2:06
Sonya Ramsey	Okay. Well, I guess that's all my questions. Is there anything else—that's all my questions. Is there anything else I left out or that you'd like to add?	3:18
Eva Gibbs Adams	No, I think I've told you about all I know.	3:29
Sonya Ramsey	Okay. Okay.	3:31
Eva Gibbs Adams	Yes. I just missed the neighbors on this street that we used to have. But now the girl across the street is young. She's in her thirties, but she doesn't live the life that I think her mother would like her to live. In fact, I don't know her mother, but she's friendly to everybody. She's got four children, I think, but she's young and wild. She'll tell me, "Ms. Adams, I'm wild".	3:32
Eva Gibbs Adams	But now, she respects me highly. If they come over there and they have the music going too loud on the porch, she gets it lowered because of Ms. Adams. I told her yesterday, I said, look, Jill, nothing going on there.	4:02
Sonya Ramsey	Oh.	4:20

Item Info

Title:

Eva Adams interview recording, 1993 August 07

Date:

August 7, 1993

Creator:

Adams, Eva Gibbs

Contributor:

Ramsey, Sonya Yvette

Description:

Name: Eva Gibbs Adams; Date of birth: 1912-08-17; Place of birth: New Bern, NC; Occupation(s): educator; Residence: New Bern, NC
Informant ID: 256; Interviewed by: Sonya Ramsey.

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Educator

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Language:

English

Digital Collection:

Behind the Veil

Source Collection:

Behind the Veil: Documenting African American Life in the Jim Crow South interviews, photographs, and project records, circa 1864-2011, bulk 1990-2004

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The David M. Rubenstein Rare Book and Manuscript Library acquired the Records of the Behind the Veil Oral History Project from the Duke University Center for Documentary Studies in 1997, 1998, 2000, and 2002.

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Limited Re-Use

CC BY-NC 4.0

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Copyright for content created by the Behind the Veil project is held by Duke University and made available to the public using a Creative Commons Attribution / Non-commercial (CC-BY-NC) license.

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Interview number: 660
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Eva Adams interview recording, 1993 August 07

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1. Eva Adams administrative file, 1993

John Hope Franklin Research Center

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Eva Adams interview recording, 1993 August 07

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